Thurs., Oct. 21, 1999
"I hate
monsters like Godzilla who can eat any
- Comment I overheard
being made by a ghoul
It takes a big man to admit he was wrong. Not being a big man, I've borrowed one for the occasion and have just now signed the papers authorizing him to issue the following statement on my behalf: "Yesterday the author of this journal said that the purpose of Halloween was to scare people. That was a mistake."
There. Now that that's out of the way, I can move on to other things.
Or at least I thought I could. Alas, seems I now have a big man beside
me, demanding that I reveal exactly what I think the real purpose is of
Halloween if it's not to scare people. Seems he refuses to let me
move on to other things until I do.
For Immediate Release: The Real Purpose Of Halloween Halloween is the one day of the year when we can be someone or something else. Race, gender, nationality, and even species all melt away. You want to be a Martian, you can be a Martian. You want to be Henry VIII or Mary Todd Lincoln, you can be Henry VIII or Mary Todd Lincoln. Your choices aren't limited to this earth or this time. Even the boundary between life and death - so firmly enforced by nature and society alike the rest of the year - is erased. Your choices are limited only by your imagination.
As a boy, I found Halloween the only holiday that was liberating rather
than merely one more cultural imposition.
Halloween was liberating in other ways, too. It was the one time
of the year when Night was a friend to embrace and not a danger to hide
away from. Walking the streets blocks from home after dark any other
time would have been crazy, but on Halloween the sheer number of make-believe
horrors on the sidewalks and porches chased all real ones away - or so
it seemed.
This, too, was unusual. As a kid I felt sorry for myself a lot, and
never more so than when bumping up against another boundary. I hated
boundaries as a kid. I hated having to learn them, and I hated having
to learn that to ignore the differences between the sidewalk in front of
my door and the busy road beyond it ran the risk of ending up crushed beneath
an 18-wheel semi truck like a certain 12-year-old boy I never knew and
now will never know.
I think Halloween is our most social holiday. New Year's Eve isn't
much of a social occasion unless you're old enough to drink. Valentine's
Day is for couples lost in a bliss that separates them from everyone else
and makes singles feel like shit. It's been my experience that St.
Patrick's Day works best if you're Irish. Memorial Day is an obligation,
and a reminder of history's absurdity and the fact that death really can't
be escaped, not even by handsome young men in top physical condition and
pretty costumes. It is the Anti-Halloween, a bowing down to predecessors
forever trapped behind their assigned hero masks, a sad duty to be performed
for those eternally trapped in an unchangeable, regrettable past.
The 4th of July is a lot of heat and noise masquerading as love of country.
Even at its best, as a celebration of freedom, it verges uncomfortably
close to nationalism, to jingoism, to "We're #1 and You're NOT!" Thanksgiving
and Christmas are really family holidays; they have little appeal for one
whose family is as messed up as mine is.
Not that it's perfect, of course. The freedom it bestows is more illusion than not, and I forget that at my own risk.
I hit my head a lot as a kid. I know, I know - no major surprise
there for anyone who's read an entry or two. What not even my wife
knows, however, is that many of those blows to my noggin occurred because
of Godzilla.
Anyway, the moral of the story is this: On Halloween there are no limits,
and any place in the grand scheme of things we want to be is exactly the
place we ought to be.
The annual buying of a new coffee table can wait until November 2.
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Scenes From A Previous Rampage
Forward Into The Unknown
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(©1999 by Mary Todd Lincoln VIII) |